Obama, Annan, Assad and Mass Murder

Jonathan Schanzer and Claudia Rossett, writing in the New Republic say we should have smelled a rat as soon as Annan was dispatched. They remind us that, in addition to the Rwanda and Srebrenica mass murders, Annan was been behind the monstrously corrupt oil-for-food program:

The program, run by the U.N. from 1996 until Saddam Hussein’s overthrow in 2003, was supposed to ease the pain imposed on Iraq’s people by sanctions targeting Saddam’s regime. Instead, Oil-for-Food evolved into one of the most corrupt failures in the history of humanitarian relief, while Annan urged its expansion and praised its performance.

Oil-for-Food expanded into a global web of graft. Saddam skimmed and smuggled billions out of oil production meant for humanitarian relief, using the money to pay the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, bribe for influence on the Security Council, buy luxury cars, and procure weapons. Syria, incidentally, was one of Saddam’s major conduits for smuggling oil out of Iraq, and smuggling weapons in. . . .

In 2005, Annan’s handpicked director, Benon Sevan, was accused by the U.N.’s own inquiry of having pocketed money from the program. In 2007, Sevan was indicted in the Southern District of New York. Sevan proclaimed innocence, but never faced justice. He fled to Cyprus despite Annan’s assurances he would remain in Manhattan to cooperate with investigators.

It also emerged that the secretary general’s own son, Kojo Annan, profited from working for a Swiss company, Cotecna Inspection SA, hired by the secretariat for lucrative inspection work in Iraq under Oil-for-Food.